Laura+Grunas


 * SUMMARY: Laura Grunas, age 30, of Plantation, FL, committed suicide on August 4, 2006 after an abortion.**

On August 4, 2006, 30-year-old Laura Kristen Grunas, a police officer in Plantation, Florida, shot her boyfriend, 31-year-old Robert Peat, dead inside his home. Grunas then turned the gun on herself. The couple had been together for about a year.

Neighbors reported that Laura was hysterical the last day of her life, standing outside Peat's garage yelling, "Why is everyone blaming this on me? He killed my baby." The argument became so loud that neighbors called the police.

In what those close to the pair believed to have been a mutual decision, Laura had aborted the couple's baby a few weeks earlier. Michael Roth, a friend of Peat, told police that Peat had been "enormously upset" about the[|abortion]. "He was a lot more religious than me and didn't believe in that, but they had felt that that was the right thing to do for whatever reasons."

Peat had called Roth and asked him to come over shortly before the shooting. Roth said that when he arrived, Grunas became upset, saying, "If, when he felt the need to call, did he tell you about killing my baby?"

Peat also called the police, and when two officers arrived, Grunas, a colleague of theirs, became furious. They asked her to leave, and she complied. Peat asked Roth to remain with him, and Roth recommended that Peat get a restraining order. "Thirty seconds after I tried to make that suggestion, his phone started ringing. .... And then she started banging on the front door."

Laura then used a Smith & Wesson 9mm, her work-issued handgun, to shoot out the sliding glass door to the kitchen. Roth, who suffered minor injuries in the incident, fled the kitchen through the shot-out door and called 911.

Laura had been a police officer in Plantation for about five years, and none of her colleagues suspected that she was troubled. But Roth, in whom Peat had confided about the abortion, told investigators that the couple's relationship had been increasingly rocky since the abortion.

Abortion is associated with an increase in all forms of violent death: accident, homicide, and suicide.

Other post-abortion suicides include:
 * **@Carol Cunningham**, age 21, who shut herself in her garage, ran her car, and died from the exhaust fumes in August of 1986
 * **@Arlin della Cruz**, age 19, who hanged herself in the woods near her house in October of 1992
 * **“@Haley Mason”**, age 22, who overdosed on pills and alcohol in April of 2001
 * "**@Sandra Roe**," age 18, who killed herself using an unidentified means in April of 1971
 * **@Sandra Kaiser**, age 15, who threw herself off an overpass into traffic in November of1984
 * **@Stacy Zallie**, age 20, who committed suicide in October of 2002

Sources:
 * "Police Identify Officer, Firefighter Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide," //NBC6.net, South Florida//, posted Aug. 4, 2006, updated Aug. 5, 2006
 * "Officer, firefighter killed in apparent murder-suicide," //Florida Today//, Aug. 6, 2006
 * "A firefighter and a police officer," //Home Sweet Home//, posted Aug. 6, 2006
 * "Officer, firefighter in likely murder-suicide," //Tampa Bay Times//, posted Aug. 6, 2006
 * "Police Still Unable To Interview Sole Witness To Murder-Suicide," Sun-Sentinel, posted Aug. 9, 2006
 * "Report Details Murder-suicide," //Sun-Sentinel//, posted Sept. 22, 2006
 * "Report says Plantation officer committed murder-suicide following abortion," //Sun-Sentinel.com//, posted Sept. 22, 2006
 * "Officer Grunas/Firefighter Peat murder-suicide explanation perhaps too simplistic," //Behind the Blue Wall//, posted Sept. 24, 2006
 * "Murder-suicide tied to abortion," //South Florida Sun-Sentinel//, posted Sept. 24, 2006



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